Details
About this piece
On the flat, shallow beaches of Port Phillip, where the tide draws out a long way over hard sand, a skittle board was the thing to have: a thin board skimmed across the ankle-deep water, run at and ridden as it planed over the shallows. For a good part of the twentieth century the councils that patrolled those beaches wanted the skittle boards, and the surfboards, kept clear of the swimmers, and this enamel sign is that by-law.
It is the wording that stops you now. The surfboard is still with us; the skittle board has all but gone, a small vanished pleasure of the bayside summer. The sign came from a Williamstown estate, though the exact beach it once warned is not written down. We mounted it on a reclaimed hardwood frame through its own fixing holes, nothing new drilled. We could not find another like it anywhere.
Specifications
- Australia, a flat Port Phillip bay beach, c. 1930s-1960s
- Vitreous enamel on steel: black lettering and a white keyline on a chrome-yellow ground
- Legend: USE OF SKITTLE BOARDS & SURFBOARDS PROHIBITED
- A council beach by-law: a skittle board is a board skimmed across the shallow flats at low tide, kept, with surfboards, clear of the swimmers
- Now mounted on hessian in a reclaimed hardwood frame, screwed through the sign's original fixing holes
- Framed 80 cm wide, 45 cm high, 2 cm deep; 5.7 kg; hanging hardware fitted, ready to hang
- Williamstown provenance (Hobsons Bay); the exact beach is not recorded
- Honest age: enamel chips, edge rust and losses, a hairline or two; the wear is the record of an outdoor life
- Color
- Yellow
- Style
- Vintage
- Material
- Enamel
- Condition
- Average
- Dimensions (cm)
- W 80D 2H 45
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